The botanical garden Vasile Fati of Jibou is created in the former garden of the largest barock castle of Romania, Wesselényi, in the 1960s. It contains two Japanese gardens, the small and the big one, the big one containing also other oriental elements. They will be presented together with other Japanese gardens in Romania at the "Museums and heritage" conference in Bucharest on the 3rd of October, with Japanese guests.

Maria Bostenaru 2017 / CC BY

Large Japanese garden in Jibou botanical gaden

Japanese gardens in Romania are less known, but the ones in Jibou are among the largest and most notable. Jibou is in Salaj county, on the hillside. The small Japanese garden is in the vicinity of the castle in the garden of which the botanical garden is, and of the winter gardens. It is surrounded by large trees, and it presents an island with stone and red timber bridges. The large Japanese garden is on the contrary in open space and it can be seen from above from the slope. It is divided in two by the main path, it contains a tea house and various bridges and stone and red timber elements. The Jibou castle garden was object of investigation of Albert Fekete from Budapest on Transylvanian castle gardens for which the Europa Nostra prize and other prizes were awarded. Subsequently also a restoration plan was done. The botanical garden is well visited by tourists from Romania and abroad and well maintained.

On the 3rd of October a Japanese professor and an ICOMOS expert dealing with the monasteries in northern Romania will visit Bucharest and invited contributions for a symposium. On this occasion we will present the Japanese gardens in Europe. The connection is built by the fact that botanical gardens, where Japanese gardens can be found as part of Asian flora, are living museums like aquaria or like garden shows.

The original LE:NOTRE Projects were co-funded by the European Union's Socrates and Lifelong Learning Programmes.
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